From the archives: IRA tries to kill Maggie Thatcher

Sun, 07 Jan, 2024 - 02:00

Four people were feared dead last night after IRA bombers devastated Brighton's Grand Hotel — but narrowly failed to assassinate British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Senior Tory MP Sir Anthony Berry, whose four children are cousins of the Princess of Wales, is one of two people known to have been killed by the IRA bidding to wipe out the British cabinet.

Also among the dead are Roberta Wakeham, wife of present UK government chief whip John Wakeham, and Jeanne Shattock wife of President of SW Conservative Association Gordon Shattock.

Sussex police said one other is missing, feared dead among the rubble — but the IRA just missed their main target, the prime minister herself.

Twenty pounds of gelignite, with a timed detonator, had been placed in a 5th floor room designed to send hundreds of tons of masonry collapsing onto the prime minister's first floor Napoleon Suite.

The huge blast, shortly after 2.45am ripped open the front of the hotel and wrecked the bathroom she had visited just two minutes earlier.

Firemen were last night frantically digging in the ruins of the Grand Hotel for up to three people still believed to be buried.

Earlier, they had dug out cabinet minister Norman Tebbit and government chief whip John Wakeham, among 15 of the 34 injured detained in the Royal Sussex Hospital.

Amid the chaos, the Iron Lady, shaken but unhurt, showed steely calm as she and other cabinet members, many still in pyjamas, were led to safety.

A few hours later, it was back to business as usual for the prime minister as she insisted the party conference go on as scheduled and she told the bombers, you cannot win.

Emotional but grimly resolute, she bravely went before her shocked supporters and said of the outrage: "It was an attempt to cripple her majesty's democratically-elected government".

The fact that they had gathered again in the conference centre, "shocked but composed and determined", was a sign that "not only has this attack failed, but that all attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail".

But the IRA, who admitted responsibility for the blast in a statement to the Press Association in Dublin, warned Mrs. Thatcher: "Today we were unlucky, but remember, we have only to be lucky once, you will have to be lucky always".